Hayashibara Museum of Art East Storehouse

The Storehouse That Kept the Ikeda Archives

The Hayashibara Museum of Art East Storehouse (林原美術館東蔵, Hayashibara Bijutsukan Higashigura) is an early Meiji-period storehouse, built between 1868 and 1882, on the north side of the Hayashibara Museum of Art grounds in Marunouchi, Kita-ku, Okayama City, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan in 2023. It is the easternmost of three storehouses lined up along the northern stone wall: two storeys, timber-framed, with a tiled roof and a building area of 89 square meters, the smallest of the three.

It originally stood at the Ikusaka Mukai-yashiki, a residence of the Ikusaka branch of the Ikeda family, and was moved here at the end of the Meiji era. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the move to about 1909.

Home of the Ikeda Family Archive

What makes the Hayashibara Museum of Art East Storehouse important is less its construction than its contents. The Agency describes it as the building of the former Ikeda Family Library, a vast body of valuable documents.

The Ikeda Family Library, or Ikeda-ke Bunko, is the name for the administrative records of Okayama Domain over roughly 240 years, from Ikeda Mitsumasa's arrival at Okayama Castle from Tottori in 1632 until the domains were abolished in 1871, together with the books kept by the Ikeda marquises. Okayama Prefecture counts 68,083 domain records, 4,166 Japanese titles in 22,117 items and 653 Chinese titles in 10,420 volumes.

The prefecture states that this material was kept in the East Storehouse until it was donated to Okayama University in 1959. Okayama University tells the story in two stages: the core of the archive was bought after the war by a local foundation committee and given to the university, and papers on the family's household affairs after the Meiji period followed in 1959 as a gift from Hayashibara Ichiro. Either way, a large share of the domain's written record spent the decades between Meiji and the postwar years inside this small building.

The storehouse was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape, and the Agency also credits it with forming, together with the Central and West Storehouses, a streetscape of samurai storehouses.

The Walls of the East Storehouse

The Hayashibara Museum of Art East Storehouse is a two-storey Dozo-zukuri storehouse with a gabled Kirizuma-zukuri roof covered in Hongawarabuki tiling. The walls are white Shikkui plaster, and below waist height they are faced with flat tiles laid on the diagonal, a pattern known as shihanbari.

Its neighbors are finished differently. The Central and West Storehouses have Namako-kabe tiling at the base and a band of the same lattice running around the upper floor. The Agency's descriptions mention that band for the other two, while for the East Storehouse they note only the diagonal tiling at the base. Compare the three from east to west and look at the base tiles and the upper wall: storehouses from the same estate were not finished alike.

At 89 square meters, the East Storehouse is about 60 percent of the Central Storehouse and roughly half the size of the West. The Agency's database also includes a photograph of its roof framing on the east side.

Visiting the East Storehouse

All exhibitions at the Hayashibara Museum of Art take place in the main building, and the museum's visitor guide says nothing about opening the Hayashibara Museum of Art East Storehouse to the public. What you can see is the exterior.

The storehouse stands on the stone wall at the northern edge of the grounds, facing south. Ask at reception where on the grounds it can be viewed. The archive it once held now belongs to Okayama University Library, and a selection of maps and documents is shown each year in the Ikeda Family Library map exhibition at Okayama City Museum near the station.